Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will dramatically increase the effectiveness of the financial industry. Bitcoin is an efficient alternative in countries with unstable economies, according to a study recently published by Infiniti Research.

Cryptocurrencies Impact the Financial Industry

The rate at which research reports about Bitcoin 00 and other cryptocurrencies are being published is increasing. The latest piece of research comes from Infiniti Research, a provider of market intelligence, entitled “Top 4 Types of Digital Currency and Their Impact on The Financial Industry.” Read more...

Recent research from IW Capital found that 38 percent of the British population do not “understand” cryptocurrency. Furthermore, a mere 5 percent of those cryptocurrency investors polled have actually turned a profit — a fact the investment house’s CEO finds “very concerning.”

A Fundamental Lack of Information or Knowledge

British investors do not understand cryptocurrency, according to recent research from IW Capital. The Mayfair-based SME investment house shared the research with Express.co.uk.

The report surmises that the vast majority of the UK investing community finds investing in cryptocurrency to be a worse decision than investing in traditional markets. Read more...

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have found that a significant number of ICOs retained centralized control through undisclosed code.

Backdoor Centralization

The full paper, titled Coin-Operated Capitalism and published on July 18, is an “interdisciplinary effort spanning law, economics, and computer science,” according to University of Pennsylvania Law Professor David Hoffman.

The researchers looked at the top fifty ICOs which raised a total of $ 2.6 billion USD in revenue with the notional initial market cap of $ 3.8 billion. “We looked at the top fifty ICOs from 2017 taking into account every white paper, T&C and prospectus, every available piece of code, and every social media post we could get our hands on,” says Hoffman.Read more...

The Bitcoin network is now regularly producing blocks over the 1MB block size limit that was in place prior to Segregated Witness (SegWit).

Bitcoin Blocks Now Exceed 1MB

Bitcoin 00 has been growing in popularity since it was created almost a decade ago. It is used by more and more people each day — and more transactions mean bigger blocks forming the block-chain.

The blocks produced by the Bitcoin network (approximately every 10 minutes) are now exceeding the 1MB limit that was in place before Segregated Witness was introduced in August of last year. “After the upgrade to SegWit in August 2017, although in a much slower fashion than many had hoped, the old 1MB blocksize limit is slowly starting to fade away,” BitMex Research wrote today. Read more...

While short term investors and speculators might not be in the best of shape right now, the long term development of the ecosystem is still advancing on pace. Companies and institutions are continuing to invest time and money for furthering cryptocurrency research as can be seen by the stories featured in today’s edition of Bitcoin in Brief.

EOS is by far the largest Initial Coin Offering (ICO) in the history of cryptocurrencies. Having raised more than $ 3.5 billion, it promises to become an extremely fast and scalable blockchain protocol with zero transaction fees. Even though the EOS main-net has not gone live yet, many believe it has the potential of becoming a standard for decentralized applications that require fast, secure and free interactions between their users.Read more...

Dash, is short for “Digital Cash”, and it aims to become exactly that. A pioneer in the crypto industry, Dash’s protocol is modeled after Satoshi’s original blockchain and adds a few unique features for maximum speed, privacy, and lower transaction fees. Thanks to these innovations, Dash has the potential to become a true standard for transactions between individuals in a decentralized and secure manner.

Not only is this one of the most well-established cryptos in the payments space, but the community continues to innovate and bring crypto to new and exciting places, particularly in emerging markets. In addition, according to our findings below, we feel that this cryptocurrency is acutely undervalued compared to the rest of the cryptomarket. Read more...

]In a fresh new twist, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has admitted to issuing its ban on cryptocurrency-related accounts spontaneously, without taking time to study and understand how cryptocurrencies work.

In reply to a Right to Information query filed by a local lawyer with the Twitter handle Blockchainlaw91, the bank revealed that its decision to ban cryptocurrency-related accounts in the country was made without due consultation or study.

How It Started

India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, started warning its citizens against the dangers of investing in cryptocurrencies in 2013, which was followed by two other warnings in 2017, before coming down hard on the industry earlier this year.Read more...